


Many Happy Returns

by WaltzQueen



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: 1 hour fic, Drabble, Gen, Spoilers for Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 14:25:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12389916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaltzQueen/pseuds/WaltzQueen
Summary: Welcome Home, Brighton





	Many Happy Returns

The reader has been waiting, She's laid out a pot of Silt Soup and WitherRoot on the blackwagon's table. She and Oralech and Volfred sit and wait at the base of the river where exiles arrive. Every so often she scratches her cracked nails against her peeling scalp, Orlaech absently swats her hand away from the slowly growing horns forcing their way out of her skull. Volfred has let his roots sink into the inhospitable soil. Oralech applies gentle pressure to the Reader's weak legs, alleviating their ache somewhat.

  
They are waiting patiently. Most of the newly exiled come down in fine garments. Silks shirts and linen pants that won't last a season in the Downside make appearances as their owners drag themselves and their compatriots from the cruel and harshly freezing waters. They all seem to moan piteously. Well, tough luck, the Nightwings say to themselves, passing messages along inside their minds. We've done the same thing but worse.

  
A few bodies go floating past. Victims to the river, claimed by the journey and unable to suffer the life in the Downside they were intended to live. Volfred looks away,Oralech to. Memories of Erisa in he Shimmer Pool rise from the depths of their minds like the clutches of the Unfathomed Plurnes pulling them down. The reader focuses then, highlighting the sour weather of the day, the bitterness of the air, so very different from Mt. Alodiel. With her calm anchor the other two Nightwings pull themselves back to the present.

  
The exiles keep coming for three days and nights. In bunches they go sailing down the river, stragglers good enough to hide but not good enough to not be found. It is only at the very end that their long awaited guest arrives.

  
Although Volfred and Oralech have never seen the raiment glimpsed in flashes as it travels down the falls, the Reader has and her eyes latch onto it with a desperate hunger, a thirst unquenchable and unimaginable. Despite unlinking their minds from each other long ago they can sense her keen interest and expectation. And, like a Rite, the three act as one, peering into the water to watch as Former Archjustice Brighton Androbeles IX lands ashore on the grounds of the Downside. Back again.  
  
The wig and mask are gone now. It is the face of a human she sees, looking down at him;Tears streaming silently from hopeless eyes. He floats down the coarse river, staring into the clouded sky as though seeing a specter upon his doorstep. Even Sandra the Unseeing, watching, such as it is, through the polished walls of the Beyonder Crystal can tell that whatever life was in the Voice was gone now. No more extant than Sandra's physical form.

  
As one, the three bend over him and speak.

"Welcome Back"


End file.
